SSC

The Radicalization of Obama's 'Green Czar'Van Jones was arrested in San Francisco in 1992 for participating in a demonstration following the acquittal of four LA police officers accused of beating Rodney King.

FOXNews.comhttp://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/09/04/radicalization-obamas-green-czar/Friday, September 04, 2009 The political radicalization of Van Jones, President Obama's "green jobs" adviser, dates back to 1992, when he and hundreds of others took their anger to the streets of San Francisco in the infamous Rodney King protests.

Jones, a Yale Law School student who was working in the Bay Area as an intern, was part of a mob that stormed the city following the acquittal in Los Angeles of four white police officers who had been charged with beating King, who is black, after a car chase.

In an essay he wrote soon after the rioting and republished in The Huffington Post in May 2007, Jones said he "just marched around and chanted slogans" as other protesters set trash cans afire, smashed car windows and threw rocks at passing motorists. But he clearly reveled in the protest.

"Our moment had finally come! We were righteous, fired up, weren't takin' no more!" Jones wrote. "We were one thousand strong on Market Street, with the Bay Bridge shut down in rush hour traffic and the grounds around the state building swarming with angry mobs! Our rallying cry was for justice; our demand was that the System be changed!"

Jones continued, "Yes, the Great Revolutionary Moment had at long last come. And the time, clearly, was ours! So we stole stuff. Y'know, stole stuff. Radios, tennis shoes. Well, not everybody, of course."

Days after he wrote the essay, Jones was arrested along with hundreds of participants in a "peaceful protest" march.

Charges against him ultimately were dropped, and he says he received a "small" settlement.

"I was arrested simply for being a police observer," he later said.

Jones, in the piece he wrote for The Huffington Post, said his essay "captures the pain, frustration and aspirations of a much younger person. But I think it speaks well to the thought process of many young activists at the time."

"But the incident deepened my disaffection with the system and accelerated my political radicalization," he wrote. "The political agenda I articulated for myself and my generation in this essay remains largely undone and incomplete."

Indeed, Jones' "disaffection with the system" appeared to continue. In a June 2008 speech to the National Conference for Media Reform, Jones blasted a proposed prison in Memphis that he compared to a "huge slave ship on dry land."

"You don't have to call somebody the n-word if you can call them a felon," Jones said in the speech, which can be seen on YouTube . "The fight against this new Jim Crow, this punishment industry, where for-profit prison companies are now being traded on the stock exchange ... that struggle is being met as it was 40 years ago."

In his 2007 reflection on the aftermath of King's beating, Jones said he was among those who chanted "no justice, no peace" during the "understandable, unavoidable, even necessary" riots.

"These riots were not revolution; without revolutionary values and revolutionary organization, they were merely sharp outcroppings of the systemic chaos that social injustice breeds," Jones wrote. "But flashpoints of rage can never substitute for radical social vision or grassroots coordination."

Jones, the founder of Green for All, which focuses on creating environmentally friendly jobs in poor areas, continues to be a focus of President Obama's critics after video surfaced of him referring to Republicans as "assholes" and it was revealed that he once joined the "9/11 truther" movement, which contended that the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks might have been an inside job by the Bush administration.

In 2004 Jones signed a statement calling for then-New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and others to launch an investigation into evidence that suggests "people within the current administration may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war."

The statement asked a series of critical questions hinting at Bush administration involvement in the attacks and called for "deeper inquiry." It was also signed by former Georgia Rep. Cynthia McKinney and Code Pink co-founder Jodie Evans.

Jones distanced himself from the position on Thursday, saying, "In recent days some in the news media have reported on past statements I made before I joined the administration -- some of which were made years ago. If I have offended anyone with statements I made in the past, I apologize. As for the petition [9/11 statement] that was circulated today, I do not agree with this statement and it certainly does not reflect my views now or ever."

An aide to Jones told FOX News he "did not carefully review the language in the petition." The aide did not say when Jones signed the petition or when he became aware of the controversy.

Thursday's apology followed Jones' mea culpa on Wednesday, when he expressed his remorse for "offensive words" he uttered in February, when he called Republicans "assholes." He said those remarks "do not reflect the views of this administration" and its bipartisan aims.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs limited his remarks about Jones on Friday, saying only that he "continues to work in this administration." As to the Sept. 11 conspiracy theorists, Gibbs said, "It's not something the president agrees with."

At least one congressman, U.S. Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., has called for Jones' resignation.

Democratic strategist and FOX News contributor Bob Beckel predicted that Jones would be out of a job by Labor Day, and he wondered how Jones got the "czar" post in the first place.

"He's got every right in the world to be a self-avowed communist, but the Secret Service would no more allow a self-avowed communist into the White House as they would Charlie Manson, so that's what I don't get," Beckel said.

"There's something more in here about the breakdown of the system. Yes, it broke down with the Obama administration, but it also broke down with those people who are responsible for doing the background check," he added.

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Guest

Watching this guy backpedal has been amusing. Tax cheats, communists, "truthers"....who next? What next? While that bagman Holder chases CIA agents for no discernable reason, Obama insiders are exposed as the radical losers they are by Glen Beck. Quite a show.

UPDATE 3/10: Van Jones goes on record, that he is NOT the “green jobs czar.” Who knew my phrase would catch on so rapidly? In the blogosphere the oft-used moniker always goes with the assumed GIANT quotation marks — health czar, car czar, energy czar, bank czar. For the benefit of the harsh commenter below, no, we are not in 19th century Russia.

This reference is an “affectionate” term for an as-yet defined position. It’s used as a placeholder in the popular press until an official term is created. For the record, Van Jones will be the president’s “Special Adviser for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation.” Read the full statement here.

UPDATE 3/9 (LATE):It is official! The AP went wire went out tonight from the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Van will be senior adviser to Nancy Sutley who is the Chairwoman of the council. The word ‘czar’ is nowhere in the title alas, but Van will be heading up green jobs initiatives focusing on vulnerable communities.

UPDATE 3/9 (PM): Confirmation has not yet happened. Official statement is coming out tomorrow morning.

UPDATE 3/9 (AM): Someone just called me the Perez Hilton of the green world. I may be deserving of the intended slight. This story is NOT yet confirmed until the official press release is issued, and digging deeper into where my sources heard it from, it is all just buzz right now. Stay tuned for updates.

van-jones-red-czarI don’t have all the details yet, but I have to post it up. I just received texts from sources close to Van Jones and the word is in…he was just confirmed yesterday as the “Green Czar” overseeing the allocation of green jobs money in the stimulus bill.

This was first suggested/predicted in the blogosphere back in October by David Anderson of Green Options Media, who said that Van, equipped with years of grass roots experience in community development has built “a credible case for the win-win-win green collar economy of the future.”

I’ve been following Van closely and posting frequently with the anticipation that there might be a significant role for him in D.C. Van is in some ways a controversial pick, but though his work has largely been in the nonprofit world, he has a profound understanding of how small amounts of money can be leveraged in the right way to catalyze massive change in the private sector, by engaging both social and environmental resources — a much-needed perspective in Washington.

His model focuses on smaller projects (like solar roof initiatives or energy efficiency retrofits) designed to spur the redevelopment of a specific neighborhood, funneling money into the local economy while developing a skilled worked force primed for future work in the expanding green energy economy. For Van, the green economy is really about the convergence of the social justice and environmental movements, allowing “all boats to be lifted” as we begin the transition out of a dirty, carbon-based economy.

As traditional jobs vanish by the millions, President Obama's success will depend on the creation of new "green" jobs, including alternative energy and conservation. And President Obama has chosen the perfect person to create those jobs: Van Jones.

Van Jones is founding president of Green For All and a senior fellow with the Center for American Progress. He is also a TIME Magazine 2008 Environmental Hero, one of Fast Company’s 12 Most Creative Minds of 2008, and the the New York Times Bestselling author of The Green Collar Economy (Harper One 2008), which is endorsed by Nancy Pelosi, Tom Daschle and Al Gore.

Green For All is a U.S. organization that promotes green-collar jobs and opportunities for the disadvantaged. Its mission is to build an inclusive, green economy - strong enough to resolve the ecological crisis and lift millions of people out of poverty.

A 1993 Yale Law graduate, Van is a husband and the father of two small boys. He is a tireless advocate, committed to creating "green pathways out of poverty" and greatly expanding the coalition fighting global warming.

gypsy

meemoon wrote:Watching this guy backpedal has been amusing. Tax cheats, communists, "truthers"....who next? What next? While that bagman Holder chases CIA agents for no discernable reason, Obama insiders are exposed as the radical losers they are by Glen Beck. Quite a show.

White House officials offered tepid support Friday for Van Jones, the administration's embattled energy efficiency guru, who has issued two public apologies this week, one for signing a petition that questioned whether Bush administration officials "may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war."

Earlier, Jones said he was "clearly inappropriate" in using a crude term to describe Republicans in a speech he gave before joining the administration.

The apologies did little to quell objections from Republicans, several of whom demanded Friday further action against Jones. Rep. Mike Pence (Ind.) called on the adviser to resign or be fired, saying in a statement, "His extremist views and coarse rhetoric have no place in this administration or the public debate."

Senator Christopher S. Bond (R-Mo.) urged Congress to investigate Jones's "fitness" for the position, writing in an open letter, "Can the American people trust a senior White House official that is so cavalier in his association with such radical and repugnant sentiments?" On Saturday, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), added his voice as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. "Van Jones has to go", he wrote on his Twitter account.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Friday that Jones "continues to work for the administration" -- but he did not state that the adviser enjoys the full support of President Obama, instead referring all questions to the environmental council where he works.

Jones, a legendary figure in the environmental movement, has worked for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, as special adviser for green jobs, since March. He was a civil rights activist in California before turning his focus to environmental and energy issues, and he won wide praise before joining the Obama administration for articulating a broad vision of a green economy Democrats could embrace.

Jones often told the story of how he won over Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) during a February 2007 meeting in San Francisco. After other speakers used up all the available time for introductions, Jones recounted, he scrambled to get Pelosi's attention before she headed for the door. Jones promised her that, if she said just four words at the news conference after the meeting, she could ensure the Democrats retained their House majority for two decades.

"Well, what are the four words?" Pelosi asked, according to Jones.

"Clean-energy jobs bill," he replied.

Fox News Channel host Glenn Beck all but declared war on Jones after a group the adviser founded in 2005, ColorofChange.org, led an advertising boycott against Beck's show to protest his claim that Obama is a racist.

But reporters peppered the White House with questions about Jones after the blogger Gateway Pundit reported Thursday that in 2004 Jones had signed a petition circulated by the group 911Truth.org about the 9/11 attacks.

People familiar with the matter said he did not fully read the petition before signing, but the adviser apologized nevertheless on Thursday night.

"In recent days some in the news media have reported on past statements I made before I joined the administration -- some of which were made years ago. If I have offended anyone with statements I made in the past, I apologize. As for the petition that was circulated today, I do not agree with this statement and it certainly does not reflect my views now or ever," Jones said.

gypsy

also ssc the terminology you used (My Boy)or Boy is an old word used in the south during slavery days an during the 50's/6o's when blacks were still considered slaves by the south your still using it, an more than once

SSC

Jesus now you think you can give me a termonology lesson, well hang it up, I say and phrase things the way I chose and you of all people will not tell me any different. Remember we both came from a state that also had slaves..With you limiting yourself in news you have fallen way behind on keeping up on issues as was proven twice in as many days. Research..research very easy but an open mind is crucial. Read sort the bullshit then post the credible part.